


fragments of ourselves

by blubird1208



Series: In the end, we'll all become stories. [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Excessive Swearing, Lowercase, M/M, POV Remus Lupin, Song: Landslide (Fleetwood Mac), he's also a little angry, he's high and sad on the floor, he's the only one in the story, reminiscing (sadly?), thinking of sirius and the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29968395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blubird1208/pseuds/blubird1208
Summary: a grief piece; through the eyes of remus lupin."some memories neverleave your bones. likesalt in the sea; they becomepart of you.- and you carry them"april green, paper wings
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: In the end, we'll all become stories. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204217
Kudos: 3





	fragments of ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Landslide - Fleetwood Mac  
> Forever - Lewis Capaldi

_ “I call us part dread, part song _

_ part story, part wrong.  _

_ We built our castles in each other _

_ out of splintered spine and blood. _

_ We met in grief and  _

_ were held together by its mud.  _

_ Took crowns made of bones _

_ placed it on each others heads. _

_ We loved each other with  _

_ fragments of ourselves that were dead. _

_ This is why we couldn’t rely _

_ on the promises that we spoke. _

_ Perhaps in a different time _

_ I would have named us hope. _

_ Perhaps in a different universe  _

_ we would not meet so battleworn _

_ And I would call us forgiveness, _

_ and not remember us as war. _

**_Nikita Gill, I Named Us Grief_ **

*** * ***

“i know you’re dead.” it’s a fact, but it still doesn’t sit right in his mouth. it’s too big and too small all at once and tastes bitter like melted aspirin. a taste remus has always associated with fear. he guesses he’ll now associate it with grief and sadness and sirius. he isn’t scared of it, he’s scared of accepting it. as soon as he truly sits down and accepts it; it’ll be real. it’ll be real and he’ll be alone. “i guess you’re not really dead. but you are.” it has a sort of finality to it. 

he sounds resigned to his fate. recognizing it as a thing that has happened, a thing he has no- has never had any control over. he’s been numb for a long time. continued to be numb. he wouldn’t have wished for this to be the thing to bring him back to life. not that he was dead, just a part of him, like sirius, just a part. 

so he was numb. long before october of ‘81. but if anything could have cemented it in, it was this. he thought maybe, when he got home, back to the flat he and sirius once shared, he’d break. crumble. a paper man. a dam that just couldn’t hold on any longer. but he didn’t. he felt like he was at st. mungos. everything was gray. shades of gray. nothing tasted right, like the flavor had been locked away in azkaban with sirius or buried with the potters. he was underwater. a slow suffocation. a weight on his chest, rendering him constantly breathless. just out of reach. 

he was sleepwalking. 

awake, but not quite there anymore. 

a ghost, a shadow, a sliver of who he used to be.

because remus lupin was not built to last. not as a poor kid in private school, not as a werewolf, not as someone who made friends with Black’s and Potter’s, not as a kid growing up in a war, jumping from hogwarts uniforms to soldiers clothes, not as queer youth. remus lupin was not built to last. though, he would argue, none of them were. they were thrust into the heat of a war that wasn’t theirs to fight. adults were running, because bombs were being handed to them and instead of dismantling them they threw them into the arms of a group of brave, stupid, stupid, children, and ran. 

  1. they were children with bombs in their laps. and they carried them with them everywhere. the bombs hung, heavy and loud, but ignored. _i don’t want to think about it i don’t want to talk about it i don’t i don’t i don’t._ and then, the “possibly greatest wizard to ever live” asked you, even though you were just bright eyed kids, to step up and fight. dismantle those bombs. or hell, throw ‘em back! go on fucking missions with minimal information or training. kept almost completely in the dark, because. they. were. children. and the children said yes. because what else were they supposed to do? 



remus doesn’t think that anything would have changed. if back then, they knew--they did know but they weren’t sure--that if they fought, if they stayed, they’d die. he doesn’t think anyone would have made the decision to run. maybe they’d trust each other a little more, stop forgetting themselves and remember who they were, but they still would have fought. because at the end of the day, even as stupid bright eyed kids, it was the right thing to do. 

even if the right thing to do breaks your heart

over and over again 

until there’s nothing left to break. 

so here remus lupin is, high as a fuckin’ kite, laying on his back—starfish style—on the floor. staring up at the ceiling. one foot under the couch, one arm under the coffee table. “and you fuckin’ took me with you.” 

he sighs and blinks, slowly, sluggishly. the sigh is heavy. like he’s breathing out everything he’s ever carried since he was four. because he’s been heavy and tired for his entire life. and now he’s twenty-one and he’s fucking stuck. 

he’s 

fucking 

stuck

“what did you do sirius. what did you do.” it’s not a question. but the words do carry his grief. he sounds like a tired, exhausted, old man. much older than he is, much older than he should sound. losing everyone you love, your forever person, it’ll do that to you. 

“you hear that asshole? you...you’re my forever person. and i’m laying on our floor, and lily and james are in the fuckin’ ground, and peter is “blown up” i just don’t know about that to be quite honest but dumbls just won’t hear from me! and you’re in a cell. a cell sirius,” he pauses to laugh here, it’s broken, it’d be a painful sound to hear. “harry’s with lily’s positively horrid sister, and i need you sirius. i need you and i’m going to continue to need you and you won’t be here.” and then he turns his head so he’s looking under the couch. under the couch where you lose things sometimes. where things get kicked under, shoved under. forgotten. to be found by your grieving, high, exhausted boyfriend. remus always liked partner better than boyfriend because he felt like boyfriend was limited. partner offered more, they couldn’t get engaged, they couldn’t get married, but they could be partners. companions, best friends, idiots in love. partner held more. allowed him to be more. doing him a lot of good right now. right so, he turned his head, looked under the couch, and saw a sock. a fuckin sock. that’s what broke him! a sock. a stupid white ruffled sock. he looks at it, stares at it, it’s staring back, a staring contest. a stare down. then, in the unbreakable stillness of the small apart, washed in the orange glow of the streetlights, remus heaves a sob. a bone-rattling, silence-breaking, window-shaking sob. it had to have been ripped out of him, stolen, torn from inside. he hasn’t cried like this since he was seven and he stopped asking “why is this happening to me, why me” every time the moon decided to spite him. 

didn’t even cry like this when sirius broke his heart the first time. didn’t even cry like this when his parents died. marlene, and fucking everybody died! and he kept it together. he was numb and he was fine. 

“i love you, you dumb fucking idiot and you went and did a stupid thing and i’m alone and everyone’s gone and dumbledore is a fucking dick and harry’s an orphan and and...” he broke off to sob again, his throat hurt and his eyes were fuzzy, the worlds blurry, and he knows the pain he’s feeling is too strong for him to be a ghost. what a way to be yanked back to the land of the living. 

he’d always felt his impending mortality, being a werewolf. you don’t get to live too long as a werewolf. it ruins your body, the pain and the injuries and the changing. you don’t get to live too long, or too well as a werewolf. outliving everything, he feels hopelessly immortal. 

long live living, if living can be this. bitterly. it’s a bitter thing. it’s a bitter thing to count sirius as dead when he’s not. but it feels like he is. this just isn’t living.

maybe it would be easier.

maybe it would be easier if sirius was dead and not just a shadow remus watched slip through his fingers. like really expensive silk.

sirius was like really expensive silk.

he was beautiful, and sparkled in a soft light. and he was slipping through remus’s fingers. 

it was easier to think him dead. because at least then there was a good reason for him to not be here. to not be with remus. even when things weren’t good there was still so much love. 

if remus had known what would happen in the war he would have kissed sirius for a little longer. looked at him and held him a little more. the way his hair curled around his face, the way he looked at you and you felt like you were the world. his world. the way he smiled when remus caught him staring. the way his cheeks glowed rosy when they were in bed. the way he made remus feel so overwhelmingly loved. the soft touches and side glances and whispered worships. if he had known that the war would take them apart piece by piece and cause him and sirius to look at eachother like strangers, he would have held him a little fucking longer. 

remus truly didn’t believe in soulmates, or forever people, or “the ones”. he thought it was stupid, at first. because, how could you have a “the one” and still have the possibility of not finding them? a soulmate seemed pretty set in stone and yet some people ended up alone. not the people that did that by choice, that was different and valid. but the people who searched, and searched and never found their person. it just didn’t seem right. 

it didn’t seem right that remus found his but didn’t get to keep him. 

“i don’t know what happened, sirius. all i know is you pulled away, and i went on a mission and when i came back you were the villain and the hero’s parents died. i don’t understand. i’m just a twenty-one year old guy who lays on his floor and talks to someone who can’t hear him.” remus sniffled and looked at their record collection. it was something to be proud of. beatles, bowie, led zeppelin, kinks, ramones, lou reed, queen, prince, carly simon, elton john, the smiths, fleetwood mac, sex pistols, etc, etc, etc. sirius was really proud of their collection. always had a record on. always dancing. dancing in the kitchen was more likely than cooking a meal. but it was alright, because it was them. and that was enough. “i don’t know what happened, but i’m going to fucking find out. because i can’t hate you unless i know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you were dumb enough to light fire to everything. i’m not stupid enough to believe you betrayed james bloody potter for nothing. and then killed one of your closest friends. unrealistic, inconsistent.”

and the apartment was sad and empty and held a crying boy in the middle, but it was also so full of love. in between the records, crammed in the bookshelf, sprinkled in the photos, tangled in the bedsheets, written on notes on the fridge. yes, remus felt empty from crying so much, and alone, haunted, but not because he lived a life that was unloved. it was because he lived a life that was loved so deeply, so honestly, so importantly, and he was reminded of what he had lost. so the walls didn’t talk when he eventually stopped crying, and put photos in a shoe box. and the record player didn’t comment when remus only played music very late, very early, and didn’t dance, but cried. and sirius’s clothes didn’t get annoyed with disuse, or make a peep when remus would wear certain items, until they lost their smell of their owner, and then earned a glare. the sock didn’t feel betrayed for being forgotten, still under the couch, because remus made it a point to lay on the floor and stare at it sometimes. they knew that the boy wearing an oxford button up that didn’t quite fit, over a band-tee he didn’t listen to, crying softly while  _ landslide _ played lightly in the back, was remembering a happier time. a time when he slow danced to this song, wearing a dopey grin, singing loudly with another, twirling and kissing between laughs. and the boys hair had been lighter, and the other had been wearing silly socks that had ruffles at the top; stolen from lily. 

because between the beginning and the end, there was a lifetime. 

so much life in the years. 

it only made sense to mourn it. 

the boy on the ground got up, wiped his eyes, and went on existing. he saved the living for the years that needed them, the ones that had passed. 

eventually he moved on and left the apartment, and the ceiling really would have liked to wish him luck as he laid on the floor one more time, in an empty room, remembering that he was empty too. 

held in his heart, the ghosts of the past moved on, too. 

*** * ***

_ I took my love, I took it down _

_ I climbed a mountain and I turned around _

_ And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills _

_ 'Til the landslide brought me down _

_ Oh, mirror in the sky _

_ What is love? _

_ Can the child within my heart rise above? _

_ Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides? _

_ Can I handle the seasons of my life? _

_ Well, I've been afraid of changin' _

_ 'Cause I've built my life around you _

_ But time makes you bolder _

_ Even children get older _

_ And I'm getting older too _

_**Landslide** _

  
  
  



End file.
